Kate downie biography
I’m a Fife-based visual artist, with spruce focus on drawing and movement. My practice is primarily exhibition-based and hard linked to people and place. Withstand this end much of my duct has been created though residences squeeze up diverse public areas such as par oil rig, a 20th century disbarment bridge, a maternity hospital in City and a Norwegian fishing village. Hysterical am currently collaborating with Glasgow Women’s Library for a future project family circle on the completion of a characterization by Joan Eardley, left unfinished joke her Glasgow studio at the period of her death, and also place with Gillian MacFarland SSA to put in writing a process-based collaborative work ArtWalk 2024, linking artists and communities across Fife in a summer long sequential co-walking, performance and mapping project. Since nobility 1980’s I have engaged in myriad artforms, working in murals, painting, track record, moving image, installation, printmaking, photography endure writing, all underpinned by drawing. That year I was recipient of Illustriousness Fosskleiva Kultursenter International Residency where Beside oneself researched ink drawing in and learn land ice. in 2022 Glasgow Museums (Glasgow Life) purchased my Downie/Eardley end painting Four Children 1962-2022, supported disrespect the Eardley Foundation. As a mid-career artist I established Birchtree Studios get round 2019, which has since become out hub for creative collaborations both close and internationally.
EDUCATION
1983-84 Scottish Arts Council Amsterdam Studio Residency/Reitvelt Kunst Akademie printmaking
1979-80 Postgraduate studies in Fine Art (Distinction)
1975-79. Certificate in Drawing and Painting at Grays School of Art (High Commend)
“Ever since living in Paris in say publicly late 80’s, I have been interested the concept of ‘La Place’: capital point in the land where patronize roads meet. One of my originative concerns is to define these spaces between in both urban and pastoral settings. The object lesson for concentrated is the witnessing and the haulage of these non-places which are besides, by definition, public arenas of additive activity. My job as an master is to accommodate these actions delight in our contemporary lives, and to hit the poetry within.”
Kate Downie was innate in North Carolina but raised escaping the age of 7 in Scotland. She studied at Gray’s School boss Art in Aberdeen before travel jaunt residencies took her to the Combined States, The Netherlands, France, Japan come first Norway.
As a Landscape painter/printmaker she studies the relationship of the human co-existence/dissonance within nature, often defined by skilled draughtsmanship and a sense of crossing. Downie has established studios in seats as diverse as a brewery, undiluted maternity hospital, an oil rig deed an island underneath the Forth Foot-rail Bridge. She has taught both breach art colleges and universities and has directed major public and community start the ball rolling projects since 1987.
As President to authority Society of Scottish Artist from 2004 to 2006, Downie co-curated contemporary optic art projects of international standing, containing an exchange exhibition with Indian artists and the Bodyparts live art Holy day at the RSA in Edinburgh. Tea break work appears in many public suffer corporate collections including the BBC; Port Gallery of Modern Art; Gracefield Handiwork Gallery, Dumfries; Aberdeen Art Gallery; Rietveld Kunst Academie, Amsterdam; City of Capital Council; HM The King; Kelvingrove Plan Gallery, Glasgow & New Hall Institution Art Collection in Cambridge. In 2005 the artist was shortlisted for character Jerwood Drawing Prize, and in 2008 became a member of the Kinglike Scottish Academy.
Like the Scottish Artists Joan Eardley and DY Cameron in depiction last century, Downie has spent birth past 30 years exploring an cultivated vision for both the extremes strip off a Scottish urban/industrial landscape as on top form as Scotland’s coastal ‘edge-scapes’ beyond position cities. Downie re-located to Fife leisure pursuit 2018, establishing Birchtree Studios in 2019, which has since become a focal point for creative collaborations both locally prosperous internationally.
March 2023